Things We Didn't Say (21 page)

I steal a glance at Mallory and allow myself to savor the resentment I usually choke down and ignore. If she were a normal, stable person, she could have the kids, which is the natural order of things, and we’d get them every other weekend and the rest of the time be a normal couple.

But it’s not her fault, Michael says. With her history. She’s
unwell.

At the table, Jewel giggles over a joke Angel has just told, and I remember my journal and then I’m swimming in shame. How could I wish them away, even part of the time?

My mother could be right. Maybe I’m not up to the challenge.

We manage to cook spaghetti together without incident, and as we go to sit down at the kitchen table, I notice that Mallory has chosen my usual seat. I move to Michael’s chair without comment.

I look at the clock and imagine Michael and his father might be as far as the Ohio border. Well, in good weather, they would be. I’m grateful for his dad’s four-wheel-drive monstrosity, today.

“Casey keeps a journal, don’t you, Casey?”

It takes me a moment to realize it is Angel speaking. She sounds like her mother, too.

“I’m sorry, what? I was distracted.” I heard her; I’m stalling. My heart throbs in my ears.

Jewel pipes up. “We were talking about journals in school. We write in them every day. I was writing about alligators yesterday. Did you know they’re as old as dinosaurs? But not extinct.” She says it “ess-tink.”

Angel twirls her spaghetti around her fork. She’s only playing at eating, making stage business out of it. She turns to me, her face placid. “Yes, and I was saying that I just learned you write in a journal, too.”

I reach out for my glass of water, my hand just on the edge of shaking, and take a sip. “Yes, I do.”

“Really?” Mallory says, leaning forward over her plate. “I had this shrink once who told me to do that, but I could never find the time, what with Mike always working at the paper, and I had three little kids to deal with at home.”

“It can be therapeutic,” I say, settling my glass down with extra care. I turn to Angel and add, “You can vent things you don’t really mean. You know, get things out when you’re frustrated.”

Angel shifts in her chair to face me. “But you must mean it, at least partly, or you wouldn’t feel it. It’s not like you write lies in your own journal.”

“But sometimes you’re overreacting to a situation, and then you settle down and realize what you were feeling wasn’t real.”

Angel shrugs. “That doesn’t feel like a very honest way to live, if you ask me. I’m up-front about my feelings.”

“You could say that.”

Angel’s eyes narrow at me, and I gulp. She goes on, a little smirk playing at her lips. “Anyway, I’d be afraid a journal would be discovered, and read. Then what?”

It’s drafty in here, but the air feels jungle-hot to me right now.

“Well, you hope people will have enough respect to leave your things alone.”

Mallory breaks in. “One thing you’ll realize, my dear young Casey, is that mothers don’t get any privacy. You give that up along with sleeping through the night. You can’t hide anything from them.”

Angel has not looked away from me yet. “And why would you want to?”

Jewel says, “Does your diary have a lock, Casey? I’ve seen them with locks on them.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I say, standing and taking my plate to the sink. “I’m going to eat later. I’m not feeling very well.”

I walk to the stairs, willing myself not to turn around. I can feel Angel’s eyes on my back the whole way.

I crawl under the covers of the unmade bed. The sheets are cold. I huddle into them, cocoonlike, trying to warm them with my body heat.

Angel says she’s up-front with her feelings, and she’s not kidding. But I can’t believe she doesn’t have secrets, thoughts so deep and scary she can’t post them to the Internet.

Maybe she senses what I know for sure, that exposure makes you weak. Maybe that’s why she won’t admit to having any at all.

I can see the allure in that.

When I was in middle school, I was dumb enough to take my diary to school. It was a real diary back then, with a purple cover that said “My Diary” in silver letters, and a little lock. Those little lockable diaries were the “in” thing at my school back then. Ashley, the popular girl on the student council, had one, so I heard. It had been a Christmas gift, and I remember excitedly waiting until January 1, so I could start writing on the first dated page.

I’d wanted to show my friend Tina. We were all showing off our Christmas gifts, after all. Backstreet Boys CDs and stuff like that.

I took it to fourth hour because lunch happened in the middle of fourth-hour class. I’d stuck it in my binder, and then because I got to class really early, I ran to the bathroom to check the cover-up on a super-ugly nose pimple.

As I walked back to the doorway I heard a bunch of laughing, and I still remember feeling excited, quickening my step so I could see what was so funny.

When I turned the corner, I saw Big Mike standing on a chair. We all called him that because he was big like a high schooler already. He had my diary open, and was holding it up and gesturing as he read out loud. The class stood around him, faces up like little birds waiting for food, laughing and laughing.

“ ‘I think I’m growing breasts!’ ” he read in a falsetto, overemoted voice. “ ‘There definitely seemed to be more roundness than before when I checked this morning, turning sideways in the mirror so I could get a good look. I can’t wait until I have a true woman’s body, then maybe I can get Tyler to look at me! Tyler is so handsome, I just want to melt every time he says hello to me . . .’ ”

At this point no one had yet seen me. I felt sick like on a ride at the fair, nauseous and out of control. In the time he was reading that paragraph I saw Tina, my friend, hopping pathetically up toward his thick arm as he leaned out of her grasp. I saw Tyler pull his shirt up and bury his head inside, turtle fashion. From inside his shirt he made retching noises.

Then someone saw me, and one by one they stifled their laughter, but their faces were still flushed and pink from the glee of my exposed secrets.

Big Mike looked not at all ashamed. He hopped down from the chair, my own chair I could see now, and tossed my diary carelessly down on my desk, making kissy noises. Kids started shoving Tyler toward me, and he was backpedaling with his feet. Big Mike grabbed me, and he smushed me into Tyler, shouting, “Does she have a real woman’s body? Does she?”

“Enough,” shouted Mrs. Thomas from the doorway, walking in as the bell rang. “Everyone to your seats.”

Her stern demeanor was for everyone at once. She always regarded her class as one organism, behaving or misbehaving as a unit. It never occurred to me to tell her what had happened.

I slunk into my chair and glanced at the lock before I buried my diary back in my binder. The flimsy thing had simply been busted open.

I later heard from Tina that she’d mentioned my diary to Jenny, something about how she heard I had a cool purple one and I’d brought it to show her, and Big Mike had overheard and run right to my desk.

For weeks afterward it was the cool thing to do, to grab Tyler and shove him at me. Once Nick Allen smashed me up against a locker, feeling my chest for a woman’s body, declaring it not there yet.

If Tyler happened to glance my way, he always looked like he might vomit and he’d scurry away as fast as possible. All things considered, I couldn’t blame him.

I threw away the purple diary in a Dumpster at the grocery store. I eventually bought a plain notebook and hid it between the mattress and box spring in my room, publicly declaring that diaries were lame anyway.

Because if I learned nothing else in seventh grade, I learned that one flimsy lock is hardly enough to protect your secrets.

Chapter 28
Angel

I
t’s kind of nice doing dishes with my mom. It’s so . . . normal.

When my phone bleeps in my pocket, I dry my hands and reach for it. I have to hold the phone out of my mom’s view because she’s stretching her neck to see.

It’s Scott. I’ve been trying to get his attention for weeks now.

Ru OK? Found him?

I hadn’t told him about Dylan, but word gets around. And he’s concerned! It’s sweet. I feel a little guilty being happy about his concern, considering the reason.

Yeah. He ran away, he’s fine.

Cool. Coming 2 the party?

I hadn’t even had a chance to ask my dad about Hannah’s party. It’s not the kind of thing he normally lets me go to. It’s not chaperoned, and there will be booze there. Not that I’d be up-front about that, but he’s not an idiot and he’d figure it out on his own. I pause, my thumbs over the buttons, not wanting to say “My dad won’t let me go” because that makes me sound like a baby.

Sure
, I type in. I’ll figure out a way to make it work. Later.

The floor creaks behind me and it’s my mom, trying to peer over my shoulder. She rubs her hands together, like something really exciting is coming. “A boy, huh?”

I roll my eyes and walk past her, accidentally bumping her arm.

“Hey! You’re just going to shove me out of the way, now? Since I don’t live here, you think you can treat me like crap?”

I turn slowly on my heel, my heart starting to beat hard, like it always used to when she shouted.

Then she shakes her head a little. “No, I’m sorry. It’s been a long day, hon. I just love a budding romance. What’s his name?”

“Scott.”

“Ooh, how old is he?”

“He’s in my grade.”

“How do you know him?”

“I said, he’s in my grade.”

“Do you have classes with him?”

“Yeah, some.”

“Which ones?”

“Algebra Two and drama.”

“Is he cute?”

“Mom, please.”

“What? I just like knowing what’s going on with you. In case you haven’t noticed, we lost a kid recently because no one knew what was in his head.”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean, someone thought I was such a horrible mother, but then look what my stand-in does?”

I’m no big fan of Casey, but this is
so
not fair.

“This is no one’s fault but Dylan’s. He’s the one who ran away. Be mad at him if you’re going to be mad at somebody.”

My mom puts one hand on her hip, looking at me with her mouth hanging open. “You sound just like your father. When did you get so judgmental?”

“So running away was not his fault? He just
accidentally
got on a bus?”

“I mean, there’s got to be more to the story. There always is.”

Oh, I get it. We’re talking about her, now.

“Well, fine, okay, something must be upsetting him. But seriously, he’s the one who did it. It’s not Casey’s fault.”

“Why are you defending her?”

“Why are you attacking her? Why not Dad? He’s the parent.”

“He works all day.”

“So? Dylan’s in school all day.”

“So you like her better than me, is that it?”

Her hands are shaking. I can see it from here. She’s also twisting her rings around, and working her hands like she’s ripping up pieces of paper.

“Hardly. In fact, given what she thinks of me, I’m surprised she can stand to be in the same house.”

This seems to snag my mom out of whatever she was fretting about.

“What do you mean?”

I glance around me quickly, not seeing Casey nearby, but I whisper, just in case. “I mean, I found her journal.”

My mother takes my hand and pulls me to the couch, patting the cushion next to her. “Talk to me,” she says.

Jewel comes up to sit next to me on the couch, after the dishes are all done. Casey hasn’t come down yet, so it’s weirdly like it was before the divorce, and Dad was working late, and it was just us kids and Mom. Dylan’s not here, but he could be practicing up in his room, or doing his homework. He likes to do his homework alone, upstairs. I like to be at the dining room table, so I don’t feel alone. I like to be part of things, and he doesn’t. Maybe that’s why he never talked to us about anything. I should be a better big sister.

I look down and see Jewel’s got her blanket. I haven’t seen that in a while.

“You okay, J.?”

She just nods, and snuggles up more. I take an afghan off the back of the couch, which Grandma Turner crocheted for us, and toss it over the both of us. I grab the clicker and change the channel. It was a cop show, and lots of people were getting shot and stuff.

“Hey,” Mom says from the armchair. “I was watching that.”

I nod my head toward Jewel.

Mom rolls her eyes. “Oh, she doesn’t even pay attention.”

I raise an eyebrow at my mom, surprised she doesn’t realize that Jewel hears everything. Just like I do.

I put it on
Hannah Montana
, and Mom raises her hands, making a little annoyed snort, and then wanders off to the computer.

Jewel shifts under my arm, and I remember holding her when she was a baby, and I felt so grown up. Eventually I realized that I did more for my baby sister than most kids, how I fed her a lot when Mom would get distracted, or Mom would be taking her extra-long naps, or be really upset or something and not notice the time, and how I’d change Jewel’s diaper when it started to hang down.

But she was such a funny little baby, and I liked how she pulled my hair and tried to stuff it in her mouth. I didn’t mind so much, except for when I had a lot of homework it was hard to remember to check on her all the time.

It’s a relief now that she’s bigger, and can remember these things by herself.

Of course, if Casey and my dad get married, they’ll have another baby and maybe it’ll start all over again. I’ll probably have to babysit so they can go out on dates. And they’ll probably get all kissy-face and stuff.

Awkward.

“Angel?” Jewel says, her voice extra young sounding because she’s so tired.

“Yeah, J?”

“Why did Dylan leave?”

“I dunno. I guess you can ask him.”

“Doesn’t he love us?”